UTAU

“UTAU or Vocal Synthesis Tool UTAU is a voice-synthesis software developed by Ameya/Ayame.”

UTAU has an exact meaning, but if we step back from the word, then we might just see a larger picture.

Japan has strong history with Vocaloid (because it was that country that introduced characters to a voice software and made it alive) and what followed: UTAU.

But the world has moved on, there is voice software, motion following for dancers, and character animation software out there that is not from Japan. Also the Vocaloids and UTAUloids were found to be of interest all over the world.

While UTAU will be discussed here, the technical details UTAU can be copied or reproduced using other software, but the only problem with such software is that does not have the strong history, music producers, and fans that are part of the Vocaloid and UTAU community. Most likely characters produced by other methods will have to ride the coat-tails of the UTAU and Vocaloid community, or end up having a short life span.

Finally, it’s not hard to imagine that Vocaloid will bridge the gap with the UTAU community by allowing customizable characters and voice software–but this is a very wide field to cover right now, especially with a strong mobile telephone market developing that the entertainment industry would like to have good access to. Also it should be noted that Vocaloid and UTAU are independent and not the same thing.

Technical Details

UTAUloids are different from Vocaloids because there are so many of them, where a Vocaloid might have many people producing music, songs, artwork, and dances for that Vocaloid, the reverse might be true for a UTAUloid.

Technically each Vocaloid has a voice range, and is often said to suit a particular style of music.

Beyond that, a Vocaloid has a sort of personality: the formal one that is supported by official sources; and an informal one that fans see as they like and dislike particular styles of dance, art, songs & music; and fans like or dislike particular Vocaloid producers of the dance, art, song, and music.

So fans get to have their own image of what they think a Vocaloids personality is that may not be exactly the same as the official sources version.

The Personality of a Vocaloid includes dress code, what dances it likes to do, what type of songs it might like to sing. In a way it’s making the Vocaloid three-dimensional and more real to us.

UTAUloids will also have this “Personality” and range of singing that might make restrict it to certain styles of music. Perhaps with UTAUloid the creator of the UTAUloid will have much more influence in convincing their fans of who that UTAU character really is, as the creator of the UTAUloid might be one of the very few that use that UTAUloid.

More technical details about the software and rules for making the UTAUloids can be found in the reference section below.

A big piece of the missing puzzle to UTAUloid is the characters, because just like the Vocaloids, UTAU is more than just simple voice producing software. We will see the UTAU as people, and we want to know more about them and what they are doing. This article will look into these “UTAUloid People,” or more formally, but with less impact “UTAUloid Characters.”

UTAUloids

How Can I Produce a Voice Bank for a UTAUloid if I Can’t Sing?

Before I begin this discussion, the obvious question will pop up: “I want to make a UTAUloid, but I can’t sing, what should I do?”

Once you feel you have a satisfactory singing voice, you can build up a sound bank for UTAU, but that’s not all… you can shift this sound bank of your character sound entirely different range of frequencies–and this means you will in fact have a entirely new character, it’s even possible to make the character sound like a male or female if you shift the frequencies that character sings at enough. In music this is referred to as shifting the notes up or down a certain number of octaves.

If you have the voice bank, you can change the pitch using audacity apparently: ♬ Yeah I know… does Vocaloid community use Audacity?… Oh, Sure, Yeah! Yuki Kaai – Every Breath U Take [song/music]: http://youtu.be/1hkUoqlAE9s

UTAUloid Characters

What follows is just a general discussion, as the UTAUloid are new to the author and a lot more needs to be researched about this topic as they are out there right now trying to get our attention, and the authors journey will be unique. Hope to write more about it soon. In the mean time here is a basic introduction to the UTAUloids so you to can begin your journey to find out more about the UTAUloids and what they do.

The UTAUloids are divided up into sections, that are just different ways of making bunches of lists about them. Language of voice banks are one way to list the UTAUloids: http://utau.wikia.com/wiki/UTAUloids

The lists are not so simple however, as some UTAUloids may be private, no longer used, or the owners (creators) of the UTAUloid can not be found.

There a quite a few Vocaloids and they can be quite hard to keep a track of, so it’s not hard to imagine that the UTAUloid will be equally difficult to keep a track of.